The next version of Visual Studio will be able to target more platforms than ever.

NEW YORK—The next versions of Visual Studio and .NET were given their official names today—Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015—along with a first preview release using this name.

Visual Studio 2015 will also take the next step along Microsoft's path of making Visual Studio into a cross-platform development tool. Visual Studio 2013 took strides in this direction with its preview support for HTML5/Cordova apps, and with Xamarin, .NET developers can reach multiple platforms.

In Visual Studio 2015, that cross-platform reach is going to include C++, too. Microsoft's development environment will include support for the Clang compiler and LLVM infrastructure for targeting Android and, in a later iteration, iOS.

Android support will go a step further than a compiler toolchain. As anyone who's used the Google Android SDK will know, the emulator it includes is desperately slow and totally unenjoyable to use. Microsoft developers building software for Android have noticed this, so the company developed its own high-performance Android emulator. That emulator is included with Visual Studio 2015. The emulator should (eventually) work standalone, too, so developers using Eclipse (the default Android development environment) will also be able to use the Microsoft Android emulator.

Other highlights from the 2015 release include the automated generation of unit tests based on work done in Microsoft Research's Pex project and C# 6 support using the Roslyn compiler framework.

Visual Studio's cloud counterpart, Visual Studio Online, is also making cross-platform moves. Microsoft is adding a cross-platform build service to enable Visual Studio Online to build iOS and OS X applications on Macs. This will enable developers to use the Visual Studio Online infrastructure to handle their cross-platform projects. It will go into limited preview in the next few weeks.